The sleep of Reason brings forth monsters – Goya

Early Christianity and “Blackness”

The history of racism and the way it’s taught came up at the NAACP’s book club last month. It took me this long to realize that 1) I have written on the subject, 2) I have a website where I could post what I’ve written, and 3) Maybe someone’s interested. So here it is: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1O265buFnEfdxLeROB_FO8EUmdttwrAJn

This work is over a year old, and no doubt could use some revision. But even if the writing’s too dry—or I go on for too long—it might be of interest to those of you looking for resources on the subject of early Christianity, the Greco-Roman empire, and racism. So feel free to skim the footnotes for the names of leading scholars on the subject, or send me a request for these resources and I’ll send a list directly to you.

Note: Readers will notice that my paper focuses on Christian Egypt, the subject of my dissertation. This focus limits the scope of the paper, and I’m certainly not an expert in Greco-Roman relations with Ethiopia, Meroe or Nubia. Readers may also notice that the paper references other parts of my dissertation, or seems to assume knowledge on the part of the reader that would have been gained by reading earlier parts of the dissertation. I added some passages from previous sections to help provide context, but please let me know if you have any questions.

I would love to hear feedback or suggestions on other articles/books that discuss the history of racism! And if you have written some things that you’d be interested in posting here, please do share!